Friday, October 28, 2011

Spinning: My New Passion

Ever since I linked up my blog to my Facebook account I've been shy about posting. If you're reading this in Facebook and you don't care about knitting or spinning or yarn/fiber in general you may want to just hide me now :)

Back in the spring I got really flustered because I loved to spin but the resulting yarn wasn't anything I would ever knit with. It hit me that I wasn't plying correctly so I asked for a class from my local yarn shop. That class was my last straw, either I could make yarn that I liked or I was going to stop spinning. Thankfully I had a great teacher and it turned out well. The only bad thing is that now my free time is torn between wanting to spin and wanting to knit. I left the store that day with this:

It's a very basic braid of Colinette roving that I liked the color variations on. When I took my time and used what I learned to ply I ended up with yarn that I would actually knit with (Ravelry link with all of the specs):

My biggest problem was finding time now for both spinning and knitting. I need to have some structure around my crafting otherwise I start feeling overwhelmed. I ended up working out an every other night schedule with alternating spinning and knitting. It's working out ok so far with a few changes when my husband is out of town for work.

One of the nice things to come out of this discovery process is that I really enjoy listening to audio books while I spin at night. It's a great way to keep my mind engaged and keep up with my love for books. I found that my local library had a digital media section on their website so I've checked out a ton of audio books all for free that can be downloaded to my iPod. The trade off is that they don't have a huge selection but I am listening to authors that I would have normally not tried before. So far the science fiction & fantasy genre has fit me best but James Patterson's Women's Murder Club was an interesting find. I've listened to the first 3 books in that series and while it's not amazing writing it is very entertaining with the twists and turns.

I'm currently working on the first half of this 4 ounce braid from Spinner's Hill:

I had a hard time photographing the colors. In person it's a deep, dark purple that transitions to a slightly medium purple. Not my normal color choice but it's good to get outside of your comfort zone once in a while. I'm looking forward to seeing how the resulting yarn will look with a blend of the dark purples. It's spinning so nicely I haven't even needed to pre-draft the fibers. I just split it in half, weighed the halves so I could be as close as possible and then started spinning. I'm hoping to have this one done in time for Christmas as a gift but I'm not going to rush the process.